Amongst many things, we’ll remember Super Bowl LVI as “the one with all the crypto commercials,” much in the same way we remember Super Bowl XXXIV in 2000 as “the one with the Pets.com commercial.”
You don’t see too many crypto ads on football programming these days as crypto firms and exchanges have since scaled back spending while the value of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies plummeted. But who can forget when Matt Damon told America that “fortune favors the brave” in a glitzy commercial for Crypto.com? It was just one of a slew of cryptocurrency ads that overtook the airwaves in between football plays that evening.
The one that stood out to us at the time, and made our list of the best Super Bowl LVI commercials, was FTX’s ad with Larry David. In it, the curmudgeonly David is seen throughout history poo-pooing some of the most obviously good inventions the world has ever known, such as the wheel, the light bulb, and the toilet. It ends with David being presented with FTX as “a safe and easy way to get into crypto.” Naturally, David scoffs, saying “Ehh, I don’t think so. And I’m never wrong about this stuff.”
https://youtu.be/Ut3m9OK1c7Y
I’ll admit that, at the time, the commercial bugged the hell out of me. As someone who never got on the crypto train for various reasons that have mostly borne out, I was upset with David, someone who has fostered lots of goodwill with his skeptical, cynical schtick, shilling for a crypto company.
Enjoying the Larry David commercial until you find out what it’s for pic.twitter.com/NOQSDpZXkQ
— Sean Keeley (@SeanKeeleyIsMe) February 14, 2022
However, with the news that, less than a year later, FTX has completely imploded and filed for bankruptcy, I revisited the ad and think it seriously has to be in contention for the funniest Super Bowl ad in history.
That they made a hubristic ad in which their spokesperson shoots down the company’s entire reason to exist, only for that person to be literally proven correct just 10 months later is…amazing. And the fact that it’s Larry David, the curmudgeon to end all curmudgeons, just makes the visuals all the more satisfying. It couldn’t have played out more like an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm if they did it on purpose.
https://twitter.com/TaylorLorenz/status/1590861914124726272
